


Or It Malingers

by whatabeautifulmess



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, TFiOS!AU, not detailed though, vague mentions of medical things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 07:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatabeautifulmess/pseuds/whatabeautifulmess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TFiOS!AU; in which Kurt's lungs suck at being lungs and Blaine can't stop staring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Or It Malingers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Klaine Hiatus Exchange for the lovely Musavana on tumblr.
> 
> This pretty much follows the first chapter of TFiOS, and I quote my personal favourite lines quite a lot. John, please don't sue me?
> 
> Title from The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

Kurt really didn't want to go to Support Group.

Out of all of his (limited) activities, he enjoyed going to the local Support Group for young cancer survivors the least. Kurt only considered himself a young cancer  _survivor_ in the very loosest sense of the word; it was more that it hadn't killed him  _yet_. But his father, when Kurt had first shared this thought, had um'd and ah'd and frowned, and made Kurt an extra appointment with his Regular Doctor Jim.

Doctor Jim was the one to suggest the Support Group, and Kurt's dad had insisted, thinking that it would do Kurt good to be involved in more 'activities'.

Kurt tried to argue one afternoon, when his father sent him to get ready for Support Group halfway through a Project Runway marathon.

Kurt: “I refuse to attend Support Group.”

Burt: “Losin' interest in stuff is a sign of depression, Kurt.”

Kurt: “Please just let me watch Project Runway. I like this season.”

Burt: “All you're doin' is pointing out why they all suck.”

Kurt: “That's why I like it.”

Burt: “TV ain't an  _activity_ , Kurt.”

Kurt: “Ugh, dad, please.”

Burt: “You need to make some friends. It ain't right for you to hide in your room all the time.”

Kurt: “I have friends!”

Burt: “You have Rachel. And how often d'you see her?”

Kurt: “I have friends in my classes...”

Burt: “You're goin', and that's final.”

Kurt: “Ugh.”

Burt: “You deserve a life, Kurt.”

That sort of stopped all of Kurt's arguments dead, the words sticking in his throat, though he didn't quite see how attending a Support Group in a church hall once a week constituted a  _life_. But he knew his dad only wanted what was best for him, and Kurt would do almost anything to make sure that his father was happy.

“Fine,” he said after a long pause. “But I'm recording the episodes of Project Runway I'm missing.”

*

Kurt fiddled idly with his oxygen tank as his dad pulled up outside the church just before five o'clock. He adjusted and readjusted the cannula in his nose, hoping to kill time.

His dad glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “You want me to carry that for ya?”

Kurt shook his head. “I'm fine.” The green tank, necessary because Kurt's lungs were crap at being lungs, was only light, and he could easily trundle it along behind him on its steel cart.

Kurt smiled reassuringly at his father and adjusted his cannula one last time. All his fiddling had made it sit uncomfortably, rubbing against his nose.

“Love you,” he said as he opened the door and climbed out.

“Love you too, kiddo,” Burt replied. “I'll pick you up in an hour.”

“Thanks, dad.”

“Make some friends, yeah?”

“Will do, dad,” Kurt called, rolling his eyes as he walked towards the door and entered the church.

Kurt deliberately avoided the elevator when he got inside, taking the stairs even though the effort made his crappy lungs burn. Taking the elevator was a Last Days sort of activity at Support Group.

There was a buffet table set out along one wall, sparsely laden as ever with a selection of cookies, some cups and a pitcher of lemonade. Kurt walked over to it and snagged himself some snacks and a drink, nibbling on a cookie as he turned around and surveyed the room.

A boy was looking at him.

Actually, two boys were looking at him. One was Sam, though, so that was nothing special. Sam was Kurt's best friend at Support Group, and the main thing that made it even vaguely bearable. He grinned at Kurt as their gazes met, pushing his glasses up his nose. He had some kind of fantastically improbable eye cancer; one had been cut out years before, and now he had a glass eye and wore glasses so thick that they made both of his eyes look enormous. From what Kurt had gathered on the rare occasions when Sam shared with the group, he had recently had a recurrence and it was likely he would lose his other eye as well. Sam, though, was eternally optimistic and rarely allowed the prospect of blindness to dampen his mood.

The other boy, however, Kurt did not recognise, and his eyes were fixed firmly on Kurt.

He was about the same age as Kurt, perhaps a year younger. Compact and leanly muscular, his dark hair was slicked back against his head, and his hazel eyes were bright and inquisitive.

Kurt looked away sharply, taking as deep a breath as he could and smoothing his hand over his hair. He'd changed and styled his hair before leaving the house, but he wasn't quite as put-together as he usually tried to be – the cast of the Support Group rotated constantly; it wasn't worth the effort (and it was a  _lot_  of effort, especially on a bad day) when everyone, including himself, could be dead within a week.

Now, though, he couldn't help wishing that he'd put on a nicer pair of jeans, and added a scarf to compliment his shirt. He was overly concious of his steroidally-round face and his chipmunked cheeks, all side-effects of treatment.

And yet – Kurt glanced at the boy again, and he was still staring. He kept his gaze steady as Kurt sat down next to Sam, two seats away from the boy.

Look, Kurt was just going to be honest – the guy was hot. Really hot. If he hadn't been, Kurt probably would have been less intrigued by his staring and more uncomfortable. But he was gorgeous, so...

The clock on the wall struck five, and Will, who lead the group, clapped his hands to catch their attention and led them into the Serenity prayer. As he recited the familiar words along with everyone else, Kurt decided that he couldn't let this boy monopolise staring and began to stare back, despite being able to feel his cheeks burn. The boy's eyes narrowed for a moment, then he smiled and glanced away. Kurt smirked and flicked his eyebrows up when the boy looked back over at him, as if to say, “I win.”

As he always did, Will then launched for the thousandth time into his Cancer Story. He'd had cancer in his balls and everyone had thought he was going to die, but then he hadn't and there he was, a fully grown-adult living in Ass-Backwards, Ohio, scraping together what money he could by exploiting his cancertastic past and leading a local school's show choir. He had divorced his wife in order to pursue a relationship with the school's guidance counsellor (there was something about a fake pregnancy in there somewhere as well, but Kurt had never understood that part), but then she'd married a dentist and Will had lost his job as a high school Spanish teacher when he was replaced by a man who could actually speak Spanish.

AND THEY TOO COULD BE SO LUCKY!

(Listening to Will talk every week about how he'd lost his balls but gained so much more always made Kurt realise that, really, he was quite lucky. He didn't have much of a life, sure, but at least he was aware of the fact.)

Once Will had finished his droning, it was time to go around the room and Introduce Themselves.

“Sam,” Will said, “would you like to go first? I know you're looking at a difficult time over the next few months.”

Kurt closed his eyes as Will said the word 'looking', thinking that the man must have been hired for his insensitivity; they'd never have found anyone with such a talent for it if they weren't looking. He opened them again once the second-hand embarrassment had faded to see the boy who had stared at him smirking and waggling his eyebrows at Sam, who was laughing.

“Yeah,” Sam said, sobering slightly. The boy-who-had-stared gave him a double thumbs-up across the circle. “I'm Sam, I'm seventeen. In a couple of weeks, it looks like I'm going to have to have surgery and then I'll be blind.” He sighed. “And it sucks. But I try to be positive, and I know lots of us have it so much worse.” His gaze flickered over to Kurt and then away again just as quickly, and Kurt tried not to read too much into the movement. Being suddenly faced with your own weaknesses and mortality has an uncanny way of revealing these same things in other people.

“It's going to make things tough at home,” Sam continued. “My brother and sister don't really understand, and my dad nearly lost his job a few months ago. But my girlfriend, Quinn, helps, and so do friends like Blaine.” He tipped his head towards the boy, who now had a name, and shrugged. Blaine smiled sympathetically at him. “There's nothing you can do about it.”

“We're here for you, Sam,” Will said. “Let him hear it, guys.” Everyone repeated, in a monotone, “We're here for you, Sam.”

Joe was next. He was one of the youngest in the room, and he had leukaemia. He'd always had leukaemia. He said he was okay, but he'd taken the elevator.

Tina was the same age as Sam and pretty, the kind of pretty that would have made her a far better candidate for Blaine's attention than Kurt, had Tina not had a boyfriend, Mike, to whom she was utterly devoted. Kurt thought it was a little much, sometimes: she'd been talking about him during one meeting and had just...burst into tears because, she said, she just loved him so much.

Tina was a regular, just like Kurt, and she said the same thing she always said: that she felt  _strong._  To Kurt, the oxygen drizzling into his nose through the cannula and tickling his nostrils, it felt like bragging – unlike Tina, in a long remission, Kurt had never been anything but terminal.

There were five people between Tina and Blaine; when his turn came, Blaine smiled. “My name is Blaine Anderson,” he said. His voice was deep and smooth, like chocolate.  _Like sex,_ Kurt thought, and he immediately blushed. “I'm eighteen. I had a touch of osteosarcoma a year or so ago, but today I'm just here for Sam.”

“And how are you feeling today?” Will asked.

“Me?” Blaine said with a charming smile. “Oh, I'm grand. I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.”

When it was Kurt's turn, he said, “I'm Kurt. I'm eighteen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. I'm okay.” It was what he always said.

He folded his hands in his lap and waited for the session to continue around him. It did without so much as a pause; Will knew better than to try to coax more out of Kurt.

For the next hour, the discussion continued much as Kurt expected it to: fights were recounted, tears shed, comfort offered; families divided opinions, being by turns celebrated and denounced, and it was universally agreed that friends just didn't get it. Neither Kurt nor Blaine spoke again until Will turned to Blaine and asked, “Blaine, perhaps you'd like to discuss your fears with the group.”

“My fears?”

“Or maybe you could start with something you dream of?”

Blaine laughed easily. “Marriage equality in all fifty states,” he said. Kurt might have imagined it, but he could have sworn that Blaine's eyes rested on him just a moment longer than they did on anyone else as he glanced around the room.

“And your fears?” Will prompted.

“I fear loneliness,” Blaine replied, without so much as a pause. “I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark.”

“Hey now,” Sam said, cracking a smile. “Too soon.”

“Was that...was that insensitive?” Blaine asked. “I can be pretty blind to other people's feelings.”

Sam was laughing, and Kurt bit his lip to hold back a giggle, but Will looked at Blaine chasteningly and said, “Blaine, please. Let's go back to  _you_  and  _your_  struggles. You said you fear loneliness?”

“I did,” Blaine replied.

“Would, uh...would anyone like to speak to that?” It was clear that Will was a little lost; this was far from the usual banal themes he scribbled up on the whiteboard in the corner for them to discuss – 'Love', 'Hope','Family'.

Kurt half-raised his hand. He didn't normally volunteer information or answers, not by any stretch of the imagination: four years without attending school on any kind of regular basis, with only his dad for company, had left him uncertain as to how to navigate social situations. He was not the hand-raising type.

And yet, something about Blaine Anderson made him want to try.

Will's delight was obvious the moment he spotted Kurt with his hand in the air. “Kurt!” He must have been thinking that Kurt was, at last, becoming Part Of The Group.

Kurt looked over at Blaine Anderson, who looked back at Kurt, the light from the fluorescent tube on the ceiling picking out the flecks of green in his eyes. “You are one,” Kurt said, “of more than seven billion people on this planet. You are constantly surrounded by family, friends, vague acquaintances, complete strangers. Even when you are by yourself, thanks to the internet you have the ramblings of millions of people literally at your fingertips, day and night. You can choose to connect to any person who ever has lived, is living, ever will live or ever could live, on whichever level you so choose. You could open a book and discover a whole world populated by yet more people. So there is no point in feeling lonely, because you will never be truly alone. And besides,” he added, “we're all going to die sooner or later anyway, so what does it matter?”

A long and somehow heavy silence followed Kurt's words as he sat back in his chair and watched a smile spread all the way across Blaine Anderson's face. It was not the little smirk of the boy trying to be sexy, nor the easy, charming grin that disarmed even the most hostile of people and made them like him. It was a true, proper smile, showing all of his teeth and crinkling up the skin around his eyes. It was the sort of smile that made Kurt want to smile, too.

“God damn,” Blaine murmured, “aren't you something else?”

They both remained silent for the rest of the session. Kurt allowed his gaze to flicker towards Blaine no more than once every two minutes. Every time he did, Blaine was looking at him.

At the end, everyone had to hold hands as Will led them into a prayer, praying for each cancer-afflicted body part of everyone in the room and then listing all of those who had died: Mercedes and Artie and Marley and Matt and Brittany and Kitty and Adam and Jake and...

It was a long list – fittingly so, since the world contains a lot of dead people, and a Support Group for children who have not yet died of cancer sees more than its fair share. Will droned on and on, reading the names from a sheet of paper because there were far too many to remember, and Kurt kept his eyes closed the entire time. He'd given up trying to think prayerfully during the prayer when he came out to his father; he had enough to be dealing with without wasting time on someone who almost certainly didn't exist and, if He did, hated who Kurt was on principle (according to some of his followers, at least). But closing his eyes kept up a good image, whilst at the same time allowing him to imagine what it would be like when his own name found its way onto the list, all the way at the end when everyone had stopped paying attention.

Once Will had finished, everyone said the same mantra (a stupid one, Kurt thought, and one that reminded him far too much of RENT) they did every week – 'Living our best life today' – and then it was all over. Kurt remained seated for a few moments, listening to the hustle and bustle of people picking up bags and coats, grabbing a last cup of lemonade, and making their way to the stairs. As Kurt pushed himself to his feet and arranged his oxygen tank at his side, Blaine Anderson walked over to him, his gait slightly crooked.  _Osteosarcoma_ , Kurt thought. It made sense: sometimes, osteosarcoma took a limb to check you out. If it liked you, it took the rest.

Blaine stopped in front of Kurt, still smiling; Kurt wondered if he ever stopped. He was a little shorter than Kurt, a little stockier and more solidly-built, which Kurt hadn't noticed when they were both sitting down.

“What's your name?” Blaine asked.

“Kurt,” Kurt replied, wondering why Blaine hadn't just paid attention during the round of introductions. It was what they were for, after all.

“No, I mean your full name.”

“Kurt Hummel,” Kurt said. Blaine opened his mouth to reply but before he could, Sam walked over and Blaine held up one finger. “Just a second,” he said, turning to face Sam.

“That was worse than you said it would be, man.”

Sam shrugged. “It can be pretty bleak. But it's not all bad.”

“Why do you even bother?”

“It can help sometimes.”

“I don't see how. He -” Blaine tipped his head towards Will, who was stacking chairs on the other side of the room “- is useless.” He leaned towards Sam so he thought Kurt couldn't hear. “Is he a regular?” Kurt didn't catch Sam's reply, but heard Blaine say, “I'll bet.” He punched Sam lightly on one shoulder. “I'll see you tomorrow, yeah? After clinic?”

Sam nodded. “Sure. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to hear about how, technically, I won't be dyslexic any more, since I'll be blind.”

“Your surgeon sounds like a winner,” Blaine said. “I might try to get eye cancer just so I can make his acquaintance.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.” Sam chuckled. “All right, I've got to go – Quinn's waiting for me and I've got to look at her plenty while I still can.” He and Blaine bumped fists one last time and then Sam turned and dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Blaine just looked at Kurt, whilst Kurt looked back, waiting for him to finished his half-formed thought. When the silence grew close to unbearable, Kurt said, “What?”

“Nothing,” Blaine said.

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

Blaine smiled. “Because you're beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.”

There followed a somewhat awkward silence. Blaine blushed profusely, the embarrassed teenager taking the place of the charming young man for a moment, but he ploughed through: “I mean, especially since, as you pointed out, we're all going to die anyway.”

Kurt sort of scoffed or sighed or exhaled in a way that was vaguely cough-y and then said, “I'm not beautiful.”

Blaine just shook his head. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? If I say you're beautiful, you're beautiful.”

That was flirting. That  _was_ flirting, wasn't it? Kurt thought it must be, not that he had any personal experience to work from. He didn't know how to respond, so he nodded in the direction of the stairs, tilted his cart on its wheels and began to make his way towards them. Blaine limped along beside him on what Kurt had determined was a prosthetic leg.

Blaine overtook Kurt on the stairs since, despite the prosthetic, he still had the edge; stairs were not a field of expertise for Kurt's lungs. Kurt followed behind slowly, breathing as deeply as he was able and being sure to take his time.

He was surprised to find Blaine waiting for him just outside the church, but it pleased him in a way that made his stomach clench, just at little bit.

Blaine looked at him seriously, seeming to be trying to make a decision; Kurt was just about to ask him if he was all right when Blaine asked, out of the blue, “You should come and watch a movie with me. At my house.”

“Um, okay? Is the weekend good for you?”

“No, I mean right now.”

Kurt looked at him steadily. “I hardly know you, Blaine Anderson. You could be an axe-murderer.”

“Touché,” Blaine replied. “But, then again, so could you, Kurt Hummel.”

“Why?”

“I told you,” Blaine said, smiling his big, proper smile again. “I like looking at beautiful people, and I don't want to stop looking at you just yet.”

Some time during this exchange, Kurt's dad had pulled up at the kerb. He was watching Kurt through the window with a little frown crinkling the skin between his eyebrows. He didn't look angry or upset when Kurt snuck a peek at him, only confused and not quite ready for this to be happening.

Kurt glanced back at Blaine, who was waiting at a respectful distance and looking at Kurt with barely retrained excitement. He reminded Kurt of a puppy, and he couldn't hold back a fond smile.

He stepped up to the kerb and tapped his fingers on the window of his father's car.

The window rolled down slowly. “You ready, Kurt?” Burt asked.

“I'm...I'm actually going to go and see a movie with Blaine,” Kurt said, pointing over his shoulder. Blaine gave a polite wave and called, “I'll bring him home straight after dinner, Mr Hummel, I promise.”

Burt seemed to consider the situation very carefully before, finally, he nodded. “Home by ten at the latest, okay?”

Kurt nodded. “Oh – and can you finish recording Project Runway for me?”


End file.
